Seventy six b/w plates, 37 b/w illustrations A chinese language Bestiary offers a desirable festival of legendary creatures from a special and enduring cosmography written in old China. The Guideways via Mountains and Seas, compiled among the fourth and primary centuries b.c.e., includes descriptions of thousands of amazing denizens of mountains, rivers, islands, and seas, besides minerals, flowers, and medication. The textual content additionally represents a variety of ideals held by way of the traditional chinese language. Richard Strassberg brings the Guideways to lifestyles for contemporary readers via weaving jointly translations from the paintings itself with details from different texts and up to date archaeological unearths to create a lavishly illustrated advisor to the ingenious international of early China. not like the bestiaries of the overdue medieval interval in Europe, the Guideways used to be now not interpreted allegorically; the unfamiliar beings defined in it have been considered as genuine entities stumbled on in the course of the panorama. The paintings was once initially used as a sacred geography, as a guidebook for tourists, and as a publication of omens. this day, it really is considered as the richest repository of old chinese language mythology and shamanistic knowledge. The Guideways could have been illustrated from the beginning, however the earliest surviving illustrations are woodblock engravings from a unprecedented 1597 variation. Seventy-six of these plates are reproduced the following for the 1st time, they usually supply an exceptional instance of the chinese language engraver's artwork through the past due Ming dynasty. this gorgeous quantity, compiled via a widely known expert within the box, presents a desirable window at the options and ideology of an old humans, and may pride experts and normal readers alike.

A lush, seductive novel of the mythical good looks whose face "launched one thousand ships"

Daughter of a god, spouse of a king, prize of antiquity’s bloodiest struggle, Helen of Troy has encouraged artists for millennia. Now Margaret George, the hugely acclaimed bestselling old novelist, has became her clever, perceptive eye to the parable that's Helen of Troy.

Margaret George breathes new existence into the good Homeric story by way of having Helen narrate her personal tale. via her eyes and in her voice, we adventure the younger Helen’s discovery of her divine beginning and her terrifying good looks. whereas rarely greater than a woman, Helen married the distant Spartan king Menelaus and bore him a daughter. through the age of twenty, the world’s most pretty lady used to be resigned to a passionless marriage—until she encountered the good-looking Trojan prince Paris. And as soon as the fanatics flee to Troy, conflict, homicide, and tragedy develop into inevitable.

In Helen of Troy, Margaret George has captured a undying legend in a enchanting story of a lady whose lifestyles used to be destined to create strife—and spoil civilizations.

One other monography in Bollingen's sequence devoted to tradition, arts and philosophy

Neumann examines how the female has been skilled and expressed in lots of cultures from prehistory to our personal time. showing as goddess and demon, gate and pillar, backyard and tree, soaring sky and containing vessel, the female is obvious as a necessary consider the dialectical relation of person recognition, symbolized by means of the kid, to the ungraspable matrix, symbolized through the nice Mother.

Review:

"Neumann's inventive instinct has enabled him to learn in those files of the prior a content material and which means that throws a beam of sunshine at the mental heritage of [hu]mankind. "--Journal of Analytical Psychology

Meet the Greek gods as you've got by no means visible them—in LEGO shape! get pleasure from those interesting myths, reimagined via tricky scenes and colourful LEGO bricks in a single thousand colour images! This e-book stocks a different retelling of a few of the main well known and enjoyed Greek myths, from the tales of Athena, Poseidon, and Pandora to the twelve labors of Hercules.

Within the Bull from the ocean, the tale of Theseus resumes with the hero's go back from Knossos. within the wake of his father's suicide, Athens is now Theseus's to rule. together with his shut good friend Pirithoos, Theseus units out for the land of the Amazons, falling in love with their attractive chief, Hippolyta.

Extra info for A Chinese Bestiary: Strange Creatures from the Guideways Through Mountains and Seas

Example text

The grand bibliographical project known as the Complete Works of the Four Libraries (Siku quanshu, 1773–1782) sponsored by the Qing court gathered more than ten thousand books known in China at that time, reprinting 3,461 of the most important ones while suppressing others deemed to be seditious. The catalogue of descriptive notes produced by one of the chief editors, Ji Yun (1724–1805), evaluated the acceptable works and expressed an orthodox judgment of them reflecting the highest contemporary standards of scholarship and taste.

The imperial court bibliographer Liu Xiang (c. ) identified a mysterious body found bound and shackled in a cave in Shang Commandery (modern Suide, Shaanxi) as that of the Minister of Erfu [no. ), who succeeded him as court bibliographer and edited the first known version of the text, wrote in his preface to it: “The emperor was greatly surprised. Since then, many court scholars have particularly esteemed the Guideways through Mountains and Seas and the Ru-Confucian erudites have all studied it.

280–c. ) criticized the use of deity imagery in calendrical calculation. The early Daoists of the Master Zhuang (Zhuangzi, late 3rd–1st cent. e) refashioned mythology in literary fables to argue for impersonal natural laws and mystical approaches to statecraft. Later scholars of the Ru-Confucian school not only followed Confucius in distancing themselves from discussing strange phenomena, but, as in the case of Xun Qing (c. 335–c. ), they were also skeptical of those who claimed to know the workings of heaven.